What sense does this make?

Monday

Mar 4, 2013 at 2:16 PM

The focus of our national politicians in recent weeks has been the looming sequester, a group of spending cuts applied to domestic and military spending.

The focus of our national politicians in recent weeks has been the looming sequester, a group of spending cuts applied to domestic and military spending.The sequester went into effect on Friday, enacting those cuts and making for some difficult decisions at a number of federal agencies.For at least one of those agencies, though, the cutbacks have been in place for weeks.Officials at Immigration and Customs Enforcement — the agency tasked with finding, incarcerating and deporting illegal aliens — have released thousands of detainees. Only media stories and public outrage have headed off even more releases that were planned in the coming weeks.The Associated Press uncovered the 2,000 prisoner releases in a review of internal government documents. According to the AP, those documents showed the Obama administration planned another 3,000 releases by the end of March.ICE officials have said the releases were a response to the pending budget cuts and that the former detainees will still be watched through alternative means such as home visits and GPS monitoring.The episode brings up several troubling questions.First, are thousands of people being held unnecessarily in American prisons? If ICE could effectively release thousands of detainees who are “low-risk” and “noncriminal” with no adverse effects to public safety, why were they being held in the first place?Second, why has the White House acknowledged only that “a few hundred” detainees were released rather than owning up to the magnitude of its own policies?Finally, if these detainees were people who had to be detained but that detention had to end because of budget constraints, why were so many released before those budget cuts actually took effect?American taxpayers — particularly those in Arizona, California, Georgia and Texas, where the releases took place — should have a reasonable expectation that their officials are enforcing the laws to the best of their ability.When decisions such as these are made — as they appear to have been — on the basis of politics rather than public safety and budget considerations, the public has every right to ask, “Why?”So far, there have been few answers to that question. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano denied that she knew of the releases before they happened, an assertion that, if true, would bring up even more questions about who is making these decisions and why.The public deserves to know its security and its tax dollars are being protected. That confidence has been eroded by these federal actions.

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